After 5 Weeks, Jury Is Selected for Federal Trial of Officers in Louima Case

By JOSEPH P. FRIED

Published: May 4, 1999

After five weeks of effort, a jury was selected yesterday for the long-awaited trial of four New York City police officers accused of brutalizing a Haitian immigrant. Opening statements and the first witnesses are expected today.

In a controversial case with bitter racial overtones, the Federal District Court jury that will decide whether the immigrant, Abner Louima, was tortured in a Brooklyn police station after his arrest in a street brawl in 1997 has eight white people, one black person and three people who identified themselves as Hispanic, lawyers in the case said.

The names of the jurors will not be disclosed to the public or to the defense and prosecution lawyers, under a ruling by the judge, Eugene H. Nickerson. He decided during the pretrial proceedings in the Brooklyn courtroom to withhold the names in hopes of insuring that outside pressures do not affect the jurors' judgments.

As a result, it could not be learned where the jurors live. The Federal district from which they were chosen comprises Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island and Nassau and Suffolk Counties. The jurors' occupations or vocations were also not revealed, although in a few cases they were mentioned during Judge Nickerson's interviews with more than 200 jury candidates over 10 days, a process that produced a preliminary panel of 85 prospective jurors.

Those chosen for the jury will weigh testimony and arguments in what prosecutors have described as one of the most explosive and graphic cases of police brutality in New York City in years. The four officers -- Justin A. Volpe, Charles Schwarz, Thomas Wiese and Thomas Bruder -- are charged with violating Mr. Louima's civil rights. Prosecutors say they beat him in a police car after his arrest in a melee outside a Flatbush nightclub in August 1997.

The prosecutors say that later, at the 70th Precinct station house, Officer Volpe rammed a stick into Mr. Louima's rectum and then his mouth, causing severe injuries to his rectum and bladder, while Officer Schwarz held him down. A sergeant, Michael Bellomo, is also on trial, charged with trying to cover up the beating in the police car.

All five defendants call the charges untrue.

During the process yesterday of choosing the 12 jurors and 6 alternate jurors from the preliminary panel, the prosecutors, from the United States Attorney's office in Brooklyn, and the defense lawyers exchanged accusations that each side was using its challenges in an illegal effort to exclude people from the jury for racial reasons.

The prosecutors contended that the defense lawyers were trying to exclude four members of minority groups for racial reasons, but Judge Nickerson rejected the accusation in three instances, finding that the defense had given acceptable reasons, unrelated to race, for rejecting them. In the fourth instance, he upheld the prosecution and the juror was seated.

In turn, the defense lawyers accused the prosecution of trying to exclude three white people because of their race. Judge Nickerson rejected the defense objections in all three instances and those prospective jurors were not seated.

During one exchange yesterday, a defense lawyer may have suggested an approach the defense plans to take in attacking the credibility of Mr. Louima's account. Officer Schwarz's lawyer, Stephen C. Worth, indicated that the defense wanted to suggest in opening statements that the Rev. Al Sharpton might have helped Mr. Louima develop his account when he visited him in the hospital after the incident.

The judge said that could not be mentioned in the opening statements, though he said the defense lawyers could introduce any evidence they had on the matter. Mr. Sharpton rejected the suggestion last night, saying that Mr. Louima had already told his story publicly before he met with him, and that in any case police officers guarding him in the hospital had overhead their conversation.

One of the seven men and five women in the jury is a Hispanic man in his 40's who said on a court questionnaire that officers often showed an ''insensitivity to the different ethnicities'' in the city. A black female juror in her 40's said she believed that the police treated suspects differently in low-income areas than in more affluent areas.

Some other jurors, however, indicated they thought officers were generally fair and did a good job.

Photo: The officers, from left, Justin A. Volpe, Charles Schwarz, Thomas Wiese and Thomas Bruder, have pleaded not guilty. A sergeant, Michael Bellomo, accused of covering up the incident, also denied the charge.